‘Demon’ makes man fatally stab his girlfriend

WHITE PLAINS, N.Y. (AP) — A 61-year-old man was convicted Thursday of stabbing his girlfriend to death in his bed, the latest in a long line of knife attacks on women that have kept him in prison for half his life.

After finding Lucius Crawford guilty of murder in the death of Tonya Simmons in 2012, jurors returned to their deliberations to consider yet another killing attributed to him, the 1993 stabbing of a prostitute.The partial verdict was delivered on the third day of deliberations. Prosecutor Paula Branca-Santos had told jurors that Crawford confessed to both killings. Transcripts made public before the trial included Crawford saying he stabbed women for no reason: "I have a demon inside me and I just snap." "You stab one, stab `em all," he said, according to the transcripts. "Kill once, you'll kill again." But defense attorney Angelo MacDonald suggested that if Crawford killed Simmons, it was without the "actual intent" needed to satisfy the murder charge. He said there would be "overwhelming reasonable doubt" in the 1993 killing of Laronda Shealy in a drug-ridden Yonkers housing project.MacDonald also asked jurors to consider Crawford's thought processes and intelligence when they heard his voice on police recordings. The defense attorney suggested before the trial that Crawford has a low IQ, but he was found competent for trial.Before and after the Shealy killing, Crawford spent about 30 years in prison for non-fatal stabbings of women in New York and South Carolina. Jurors did not hear any testimony about those attacks or about another 1993 murder case pending against him in the Bronx.Crawford's latest arrest came in December 2012, as detectives were looking for him in connection with the two cases from 1993. Coincidentally, he called 911 the same day to report Simmons' killing. Authorities found her body, with more than 30 stab wounds, in his bed in Mount Vernon, then captured him nearby.